Posts Tagged “Framing The Artist”

Last summer my friend Tony and I began watching feature-length films that portray artists. Growing up in the US, these films were our first models for what it meant to live and behave like an artist. Watching them again has been an exercise in nostalgia but also a critical investigation into the national image of the artist. A few weeks into our research a friend pointed us to an excellent survey of artists-in-film by Temporary Services called Framing the Artists. It includes Bucket of Blood (1959) and Color Me Blood Red (1965), two B movies we had already watched that cast artists as serial killers. These are just two of dozens of films we found that not only stereotype artists but cast them as sociopaths, idiots, misanthropes etc. This from Temporary Services: It is our contention that by continually watching, cataloging, and analyzing these portrayals, artists can also gain a better understanding of their own responsibilities to their viewers and how the stereotypes hurt their abili... More